Dogecoin plunges nearly 30 percent during Elon Musk's 'Saturday Night Live' appearance

Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by Hillick

As Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed “Dogefather," made his "Saturday Night Live"debut, the price of dogecoin fell off a cliff.

The meme-inspired cryptocurrency fell as much as 29.5 percent, dropping to 49 cents at one point. Musk mentioned dogecoin in his opening monologue and on “Weekend Update,” SNL’s satirical news show.

In a Q&A with hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost, Musk called himself the “Dogefather,” said dogecoin was a “hustle,” and howled, “To the moon,” a catchphrase popular among doge enthusiasts intent on driving the value of the cryptocurrency to one dollar.

The price of dogecoin began to rebound during the “Weekend Update” skit. At the time of this writing, it was worth 45 cents, down about 17 percent from the beginning of the show.

Lloyd Ostertag stopped by the desk to talk cryptocurrency. pic.twitter.com/cuILxOBJlj — Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) May 9, 2021

During the frenzied sell-off, several Robinhood users complained that Robinhood’s crypto trading wasn’t working.

The company confirmed the outage on Twitter. Service was restored in less than an hour.

This isn’t the first time that Robinhood has missed out on major trading volume in dogecoin. Last month, the trading platform said customers experienced “sporadic crypto order failures” during a dogecoin rally.

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Wall Street wasn’t expecting the dip.

“Also known as the Dogefather, Musk will undoubtedly have a sketch on cryptocurrencies that will probably go viral for days and further motivate his army of followers to try to send dogecoin to the moon,” wrote Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda, in a note on May 4.

Dogecoin fans were out in mass on Twitter during the show, and live streams on YouTube were devoted to watching "SNL" and tracing dogecoin’s movements at the same time.

Tesla’s electric rivals decided to make the most of having Musk fans tune in by buying air time. Lucid, Ford and Volkswagen all ran ads. Tesla notably doesn’t advertise on television.

Musk did make mention of one rival tonight. “I could say something truly shocking, like I drive a Prius.”

Disclosure: “Saturday Night Live” is a TV show of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.

burden-of-pipedreams on May 9th, 2021 at 17:02 UTC »

I mean I’m still up $13 so you can call me Warren Buffet.

Delta728 on May 9th, 2021 at 14:12 UTC »

Anyone else old enough to remember that dogecoin was basically founded as an alternative to Reddit gold?

therealsix on May 9th, 2021 at 13:16 UTC »

Saving you a few seconds, this is the entire article:

"As Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed “Dogefather," made his "Saturday Night Live"debut, the price of dogecoin fell off a cliff.

The meme-inspired cryptocurrency fell as much as 29.5 percent, dropping to 49 cents at one point. Musk mentioned dogecoin in his opening monologue and on “Weekend Update,” SNL’s satirical news show."